


Suicide Squat

by FortuneSurfer



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Season 2, Will basically teams up with other losers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-22 03:15:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14299581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FortuneSurfer/pseuds/FortuneSurfer
Summary: He arrived here four hours before his flight, and not because he’s been covertly preparing himself for this trip over the course of the last months. At least, that’s what Will prefers to keep telling himself.





	Suicide Squat

**Author's Note:**

> Brownberrypie, you are a great friend and the most wonderful editor ever. <333

He arrived here four hours before his flight, and not because he’s been covertly preparing himself for this trip over the course of the last months. At least, that’s what Will prefers to keep telling himself.

Having entered the Baltimore–Washington International Airport, Will quickly gets lost: blinded by the flicker of signs, arrows, numbers, and inscriptions on every corner; deafened by the information from the loud-speakers choking on announcements; dissolved by and in the crowds.

From the first minutes of being there, Will is filled to the brim with the incessant uproar of mixed, erratic polyphony of diverse accents and languages continually accentuated by children’s screams and crying. There are so many, so many voices separated from the people carrying their luggage and pushing loaded carts – people of all ethnic backgrounds, women, men, wheelchair users, the blind, so many people – everyone is moving along countless different trajectories, nobody notices tons of space cut through by the metal of support structures above their heads…

Over time, chairs around him empty, the steps, and the rustling of bags and parcels cease. Only the boards and displays continue to change characters with the clicking sounds as loud as before. The screens are flooded by the gleaming numbers and names of the departing/delayed/cancelled flights: Albuquerque, Atlanta, Boston, Charleston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Manchester, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Orlando… 

His own possible flight has just emerged in the table of international flights: sixteen hours of flight to Florence with one layover at Frankfurt. If Will is taking the flight. He doesn’t even have a ticket.

Shadows gradually stop to shift in the hall he is in, they disappear together with the daylight outside and get replaced by the lights and reflections in the polished floor. There are still catastrophically many people heaped on each other everywhere, and Will still can feel the labor camp-reminding rhythm of steps in the lines, as if he were one of the shoulders in a row on the approaches to the security checkpoints under the US flags hanging from the ceiling.  
It’s not too late to pick up the dogs, he thinks.

It’s not…

“I knew you would come first, Will.”

…too late.

“You are not allowed to move between terminals, and there are newsstands instead of cafes in our terminal. So, right now you’re losing your last chance to eat before the departure. Let’s see, what’s worse to stay hungry or to tag along with me?”

She smiles.

“What are _you_ doing here, Freddie?”

“Looking around.”

“With a suitcase?”

“I haven’t decided, if I’m going to join the company.”

“Yet.”

“It depends on who else will come. So, are you coming with me or will starve two more hours before boarding?”

 

A small café “Green Turtle” consists of a walnut bar counter with TVs suspended over it, tables and chairs with dark-green seats, clicking of iron hitting the plates, and the bitter smell of overroasted coffee. There is also the laid-back sound of Ray Charles, distorted by the acoustics. The low-hanging lamp that gilds Freddie’s skin and her salad sets a calming mood. Sitting across from her, Will must look like one of her informers. 

This thought is disgusting and almost makes Will lose his appetite whet by the sight of steaming meal.

Freddie wipes her mouth, puts her fork aside and looks at him without blinking, which feels like being in crosshairs.

“I heard Dr. Chilton managed to smack the FBI for an impressive compensation.”

Everything Freddie says is a provocation, she is throwing baits at him, she is trying to pry words from him, there is a voice recorder in her bag, and she is listening to Will right now like she’d listen to a recording…

“I also heard that Dr. Chilton has to wear makeup these days. Now he can put “Scarface” in the title of his memoirs. What a coincidence that Tony Montana also is a Cuban.”

Next second Will hears the rustle of wrapping paper and smells the sweet aroma (marigold, buttercups, roses, and carnation) of the bouquet which Chilton had brought into his ward, along with his thirst for revenge, mild scoliosis and a hole in his cheek neatly covered with facepowder.

He was dressed informally and indeed looked like some low ranked mafioso, a tiny man of impressive shrewdness has finally decided to leave the paddling pool of small machinations. He is doomed. They all are.

“Can’t tolerate your competitors, Freddie?” 

Freddie politely raises her eyebrows and squints. Will licks his lips trying to suppress a smirk.  
“Frederick is now your professional rival after all.”

“Oh, no. In our books we describe different parts of one story.”

“You two are a hyena and a vulture gnawing at one carcass from two different sides.”

“I haven’t written a word about Abigail, as you asked. As to other matters, I didn’t even explore my creative freedom, and you know that. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Anything I say will be used against me, and if I refrain from saying anything, especially about my defeats, the others will talk about them in their own words.”

“You have survived, Will. Is it a defeat?”

“I gave you a permission to write a book about me with the expectation of not living up to the day of publication.”

“Did you at least take a look inside my gift exemplar for you?”

“Only time will tell, whether Graham will be able to heal and pick up the pieces of his broken life. But what really interests all is, whether he is going to follow Lecter”, Will quotes with a disgusted expression.

“And you haven’t disappointed the public!”

 

“I appreciate that you came, Will. We all do.”

Frederick shakes his hand with inappropriate warmth, and his smile makes his cheek stretch unnaturally in place where the prosthesis is.

“Are there only four of us?”

“No.” Chilton seems nervous. “Actually, we’re… we’re still waiting for someone.”

And indeed four minutes after the announcement of the beginning of boarding in the waiting area appears…

“What is Matthew Brown doing here?” asks Jack, leaving Will without hope that his sight is playing tricks on him after one and a half days without sleep.

“Mr. Brown was released from the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane due to my professional opinion on his mental health”, comments Frederick and the smirk on his lips practically shouts about how pleased he is to astonish everyone.

Matthew Brown is clean-shaven and casually dressed; he appears laid-back but feels focused like a rope-walker at the same time. He approaches the group keeping his eyes on Will, as if he were the only person in the hall. Matthew smiles sweetly.

“Evening, Mr. Graham. Freedom suits you. Very.”

Will finds himself instantly reminded of every day and night he had to spend in the hospital. Reminded of every accepted tray with his meals, of every touch from his nurses, of every glance from his visitors, of every word from his guards.

A few moments Will feels nauseous. 

After having overcome it, Will says: “I’m also glad to see you free, Matthew.”

And Will is sincere, because he is also reminded of how he whispered his assassination order to Matthew through the bars of his cell, almost like an obscenity. They didn’t know each other, but in that moment they were intimate. Even if for an ugly reason.

 

“That’s madness“, Will confesses when talking to Jack a little later, he is looking at the boarding pass in his hand, still unable to believe in the reality of what’s happening.

Freddie, who was listening to them, turns around and says:  
“And are we no longer a bunch of psychopaths?”

“Ms. Lounds has a point”, Jack agrees.

Freddie winks, and Will feels in the minority and sighs.

Jack’s scar is hidden beneath his scarf, Will’s scar is hidden beneath his shirt, and so is Matthew’s. Freddie smiles light-heartedly. 

To others they have to appear like colleagues flying to Italy to have fun, there is no reason to assume that they in fact are a suicide squad.

Will almost rolls his eyes when he hears that in Matthew’s headphones roars some cover of We Will Rock You while Chilton leads them to the plane. But some part of him admits that this soundtrack feels strangely appropriate.


End file.
